Nigeria: persecution, elections and looming strife
- requesting prayer for Nigeria
By Elizabeth Kendal
World Evangelical Alliance Religious Liberty Commission (WEA RLC)
Special to ASSIST News Service
AUSTRALIA (ANS) -- Christians have been appallingly persecuted in northern Nigeria recently with churches burned, Christian children kidnapped by Islamists and Christians killed.
PERSECUTION
Compass Direct reports one such incident on 21 March when Christianah Oluwatoyin Oluwasesin, a teacher at the Government Secondary School of Gandu in the northern state of Gombe, was preparing to supervise an exam. In line with standard anti-cheating procedures, she collected all the students' bags before the exam started and put them at the front of the classroom. One girl then cried out that because a Christian had handled her bag the Quran in it had been desecrated. With the Muslim majority of students shouting 'Allahu Akbar [God is great]' another teacher managed to rescue Christianah Oluwasesin and get her into the principal's office. Then Muslims who rushed into the school, stoning the building and the staff, dragged Christianah Oluwasesin out and clubbed her to death. Evangel Chapel, where Christianah Oluwasesin (married and mother of two) taught Sunday school and participated in prayer ministry, is in shock and grief. Two days later a nearby 500-member church belonging to the Evangelical Church of West Africa was torched.
ELECTIONS
On 14 April Nigerians will elect state governors and on 21 April will return to the polling booths for the presidential election. This will be the first time power will have passed from one elected president to another, but the situation looks ominous. President Obasanjo's PDP party has put forward Obasanjo's favoured candidate, the sickly and reluctant Umaru Musa Yar'Adua, who wanted Obasanjo to stand for an unconstitutional third term. Because he is so quiet, many believe Yar'Adua, governor of Katsina State which implemented Sharia in 2000, is little more than a puppet.
There are two other main contenders: the pro-Sharia Islamic hardliner, retired general and former military dictator Muhamadu Buhari who lost to Obasanjo in 2003; and Obasanjo's Vice President Atiku Abubakar, also a Muslim. Buhari has strong support in the Muslim north but little elsewhere. As Vice President, Abubakar was assumed to be the natural su ccessor, but a major spat between Obasanjo and Abubakar has left him fighting for his political life in the courts. If Abubakar is banned from running, the great threat is he might throw his considerable weight behind Buhari in exchange for immunity from prosecution. To compensate, the PDP could offer other candidates immunity from corruption charges in exchange for their support for Yar'Adua. One non-Muslim candidate of high intellect and integrity is the widely respected Dr Patrick Utomi http://www.patutomi2007.com/, but he is considered an outside runner as his African Democratic Congress is a fringe party.
NIGER DELTA: STRIFE LOOMS
Meanwhile, the most volatile region, the Niger Delta, is set to explode. A group calling itself the 'Coalition of Niger Delta Forces' has issued an ultimatum to the Nigerian government to withdraw its security forces from the Niger Delta or face war. Nigeria's largest armed militant group is the Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force (NDPVF). It is n oteworthy that the leader of the NDPVF, Mujahid Dokubo-Asari (imprisoned in 2005 for treason), is a devout Muslim and vocal supporter of Osama bin Laden, with whom he reportedly has both financial and personal ties. Asari, born into a Christian family as Dokubo Melford Goodhead Junior, changed his name after he converted to Islam. His father is a High Court judge. The Niger Delta situation is yet another example of the union between separatism and Islamic imperialism.
PLEASE PRAY SPECIFICALLY FOR:
- God to comfort Christianah Oluwasesin's family and her fellow believers in Evangel Chapel.
- comfort and peace for all the persecuted and fearful Christians in northern Nigeria where persecution is systematic and brutal.
- God to encompass his people amidst trials and terror, protecting them from hostile forces.
- the forthcoming elections, that God will raise up before the people his candidate, a 'Cyrus' whom God will use to lead this nation of some 130 million, half of whom are not Muslim, and most of whom just want peace, justice, equity, liberty and progress.
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